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A guide to help you get the best quality for offline reading. (Not including Translation)
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guide_to_ln_manga_offline_reading.md

Guide to Manga/LN Offline Reading

This guide is basically telling where you can get the best manga and LN

Directory

Obviously, you can also pirate it but I'm not telling how.

Also similar gists by neckothy: https://gist.github.com/neckothy/6654f928fef87529646df3799f5e555a

Manga

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In general, the best possible quality you can get from multiple store front are like this: Comixology > Play Books / Bookwalker / Kobo > Apple Books > Other store front

Also, all storefront has some kind of DRM. The following are the most easy to most hard to break:

  1. Play Books
  2. Kobo, Amazon Kindle
  3. Bookwalker
  4. Apple Books
  5. Comixology (2023-07+)

Sometimes Kindle is refered with (Post-CMX app nuke), this is more after around July 2023 where they started discontinuing the old API, I decided to use this naming after Amazon decide to actually remove the app from December.

Honestly, the Comixology is just a reskin of Amazon Kindle app with extra features so the app nuke does not suprise me. For a way to get the "HD" version of it you would need a good enough screen resolution and DPI, register your device and try to download older titles which you know have CMX HD version and see if your Kindle notifies double download (the second one notifies for HD download) and the obvious KFX format.

Manga » Kodansha

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  1. Humble Bundle (x4xxx 600dpi, get the PDF and extract the image with Xpdf)
  2. Comixology (x3xxx to x4xxx)
  3. Kindle (Post-CMX app nuke) (x2702)
  4. Kobo, Apple Books (Post CMX merge) (x2278)
  5. Play Books (around x2278, some are x2500)
  6. Other storefront

2023 Edit
Kodansha recently provided their own storefront with almost no DRM, their quality is around x21xx so it is not great option since there is Kobo.

Manga » VIZ Media

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  1. Kobo/Overdrive (x2250 / x2475)
  2. Comixology (Old Release) (x3056) Upscaled
  3. Play Books (x21XX)

VIZ release on CMX are upscaled, the original resolution are at x2250 or x2475 (Shogakukan titles usually).

Manga » Seven Seas

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  1. (Legacy) Comixology (x3056+)
  2. Kindle HD (x2565) (Before 2024-07-16/Week 3)
  3. Play Books, Kobo (x2000)
  4. Other storefront

Seven Seas stopped doing "Comixology" release, you can see it on their book page where it only say "Kindle Edition" instead of "Kindle & Comixology"

Manga » Yen Press

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All storefront at x1350, recommended to get from Kobo.
You can also replace the cover image from yen press website (which is around x2400)

2023 Edit
Website changes, use Apple Books/iBooks website to get the cover at x2400 (bookmarklet script)

Manga » J-Novel Club

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  1. J-Novel Club (x3840, DRM-free)
  2. Comixology (old releases, discontinued) (x4XXX)
  3. Play Books, Bookwalker (x2560) [Play Books Preferred]
  4. Apple Books (x2360)
  5. Other storefront

Manga » Tokyopop

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All storefront at x1600 (old titles) and around x2300 (new titles).
Recommended getting it from Kobo or Comixology if possible.

Manga » Square Enix Manga

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  1. Kobo/Overdrive (around x2240)
  2. ???
  3. ???

I haven't check nor compare the quality, but Kobo should be at "Native"

Although, their image are fucking blurred to oblivion, you need to apply some method of deblurring to get a nicer quality.

Manga » Kaiten Books

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  • Resolution varies because fuck consistency I guess.
  • Buy from their stores for DRM-free version.

Manga » DENPA

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  • Resolution varies but at high quality.
  • Buy from their stores for DRM-free version.

Manga » Tentai Books

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  • DRM-free, High quality PDF (x4xxx) (Use xpdf or something to rip at ~600dpi)
  • Buy from their stores
  • DO NOT DOWNLOAD THEIR ZIP/EPUB/CBZ BECAUSE THEY SUCKS ASS.

Manga » One Peace Books

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x1200... (all storefront)

Just get it from wherever...

Manga » Alpha Manga

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  • Available only on Amazon Kindle
  • x1800 resolution
  • A shitty digital compilation, it basically just barebones chapters from their app thrown together with Cover and Colophon and they called it a day.

Manga » FAKKU! / Irodori Comics

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x3200 PNG (also DRM-free), get it from their website.

For Irodori Comics, they are using PDF so you need to extract them.
For FAKKU, use their PNG option since it's easier and they did it for you.

Light Novels

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In general, get everything from Kobo since they have the best possible image quality you can get compared to Amazon Kindle or other platforms.

Light Novels » J-Novel Club

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Get every JNC titles from JNC itself, it will contains some extra bonus and sometimes include high res insert color. It is also DRM-free.

2023 Edit
Nowadays, it is also cheaper to get from JNC directly. Every other storefront has their price bumped by 1$

Web Manga

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The following are information about manga published in a Web/Mobile App that does not have any volume release by the publisher yet.

Web Manga » Comikey

  • x2048 JPEG/WEBP
  • A bit annoying to rip from.

In general, some of Square Enix manga that are licensed by Comikey are also available in Manga UP! and are easier to rip from.

Web Manga » Manga UP! Global

  • Around x3072 AVIF
  • Easy to rip, just need to get token one way or another.
  • Use imagemagick to batch convert from AVIF to PNG/JPEG.
  • Has some Comikey licensed stuff here too.

A very easy and actually affordable web manga application, their TL quality are uhhh questionable and sometimes they fucked up pages so I guess QC be damned.

It cost around 1.99$ to unlock 16 chapters (not including advanced chapter).

Web Manga » K MANGA

  • Around x1378 JPEG
  • Web version is scrambled, only the mobile version is unscrambled.
  • NA region locked, so you need VPN.

If you like Kodansha stuff, you might like K MANGA.
It cost 1.99$ to unlock 1-2 chapters, they basically priced their chapter cost that will collect up for a whole volume worth.
Although not most of the times.

Ripping

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This section will basically tells the general tools that can be used to rip some storefront. The general recommended tools would be Calibre + DeDRM, you can google it up, it can break KEpub (Kobo) and Kindle (Amazon).

On Kobo, recently you can download an .acsm files which are Adobe Digital Editions

For Google Play Books, you can use Adobe Digital Editions then DeDRM to break the DRM, make sure the purchased manga/LN can be exported to pdf file. For the Manga, you can inspect the network tab and intercept all the images.

2023 Edit
Google Play started encrypting their images a while back, there is a way to get the unencrypted images.

For Comixology, the tools are available online. Please search it yourself.

2023-07 Edit
Comixology disabled their legacy/old API so all CMX rips are essentially "stopped." danke did some before they went missing again.
As far as I know, they now use Kindle API but with some parameters (most likely device locked) to get CMX version of it, it also use different algorithm to protect it although as far as I know that's already broken.

For Humble Bundle, please get the DRM-free PDFs.

  1. Get Xpdf Command Line Tools
    1. Extract the content and add to PATH
  2. Download the PDF
  3. Open command line in the same folder as the PDF
  4. Create an output folder (call it out or something)
  5. Enter the following command: pdftopng -aa yes -freetype yes -r 600 -verbose INPUT.pdf .\out\p This will extract the images in PNG 600dpi resolution.
  6. Optional, run the command again but add this after -r 600: -gray This will extract the image at true grayscale and proper color, you can then release the color pages from the previously extracted pages.

Kindle

Since December 3rd 2023, Amazon decide to nuke CMX app out of the orbit and merge both Comixology and Kindle app together into one Kindle app.

There is actually two resolution which are mostly tied to device and account:

  • Standard x1920 resolution
  • Post-CMX app nuke resolution (One I already listed for some)

The Post-CMX version must be a format called KFX which would actually return "Comixology" version.

Changes

  • v1.0.0 (2022-07-04)
    • Initial version
    • Most information sourced from r/mp Discord
  • v1.1.0 (2022-07-07)
    • Updated with the recent J-Novel Club DRM-free Manga
  • v1.2.0 (2023-01-24)
    • Update to Google Play Books ripping information
    • Add Square Enix Manga
    • Change VIZ Unknown Source to Kobo/Overdrive
    • Adjust some resolution number
  • v1.2.1 (2023-01-24)
    • J-Novel Club LN Information about price increases
    • Some Markdown adjustment
  • v1.3.0 (2023-07-11)
    • Add the recent Seven Seas and Kodansha resolution
  • v1.4.0 (2023-09-22)
    • Long overdue, CMX API is dead so it's impossible to rip from them.
    • Add Kaiten Books, DENPA, Tentai Books, and One Peace Books
    • Modification to some other information.
  • v1.5.0 (2023-09-22)
    • Added web manga stuff
  • v1.5.1 (2023-09-28)
    • Some rewording
  • v1.6.2 (2023-10-29)
    • Add Alpha Manga
    • Additional info for Kodansha own storefront
    • Some rewording
  • v1.6.3 (2023-12-12)
    • Rename some CMX stuff to Kindle (Post-CMX app nuke)
  • v1.6.4 (2023-12-15)
    • CMX-Kindle app merge info and mini rant
    • Post-app nuke are actually Post-legacy API nuke but who cares, the old CMX app is gone anyway.
  • v1.6.5 (2024-07-17)
    • Updated Seven Seas part
@damedameningen
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Really awesome
Thanks!

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